Thursday, August 9, 2012

...middle of the night musings about Saturday's 30k race, camping & river monsters.

Tapering is always difficult for me to do, and I don’t like doing it. I feel like I must run right up until the day of the race. I know there are two sides to the question of whether to taper or not - I choose to listen to the side that says don’t change your routine.

Nevertheless, I am making myself taper this week. I am exhausted like never before. I’ve done two long runs this week and I am beat. The only reason I am making myself take the rest of the week off is because my goal is to run my 30k this Saturday night (Capt. Karl’s @ Colorado Bend) pretty fast (by my standards), and I’m in danger of being able to do so at my current level of fatigue.

My exhaustion isn’t helped by the fact that after a couple of months off, I have two inservices/trainings at work this week. After an 8 hour day yesterday, I was super duper tired. I’m a little concerned how my Cactus Rose training will go once school starts and I have to juggle my long runs, work and life - but more on that at a later date.

I am definitely looking forward to this weekend’s race for a reason that has nothing to do with my running: it’ll be the first time my son and I go camping. I’m really looking forward to spending time with him (which is why I decided to do the 30k instead of the 60k). I can tell he’s a little concerned, tho, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, a teenager’s life is his cell phone, and it appears that there will be no phone/internet access out there. I’m thinking being “off the grid” will be a good thing…for the both of us.

Secondly, I have to share a convo I had with my son last night:

Me: I can’t wait to go swimming this weekend.

Joshua: I’m NOT going swimming!!!

Me: What? Why not?

Joshua: I don’t want a little fish crawling up my pee stream!!!

Me: Pee stream? Where did you hear that?

Joshua: River Monsters on TV!!!
It’ll be an interesting weekend, alright.

Hola and welcome to the (mis) adventures of a (wannabe) ultra runner. Who am I? Running is a part of who I am. I run to get on grip on life, work, people & why they do what they do. Most importantly, I love the feeling of complete physical exhaustion. You could say I’m obsessed with everything running & you might be too (to an extent) if you are here.

During the day, I am a Middle School Special Education Teacher and Coach Cross Country and/or Track. The best part of my day is that I get to run with speedy 7th or 8th graders. Somebody’s gotta supervise from the back of the pack.

I hope you enjoy reading this but if you don’t, that’s ok too. Let me warn you that there will be typos and/or grammatical errors since I’m doing this quickly, randomly and probably in the middle of the night/early morning during my bouts with insomnia.